“A typewriter?” I was taken aback. But he used to work in an office, I guessed he must know what you could write on a typewriter and what you could write by hand. “Well, if we can get one somewhere it’ll be yours.”
A short time later we organized a raid on the Arbeitsamt in Kołomierz. We were after the lists of people being sent to do forced labor. He was supposed to just take a typewriter, but he also got writing paper, carbon paper, paper clips, pencils, erasers, other things as well, even a hole punch. He carted a whole sack full of stuff into the woods. He was as pleased as a little kid with a bag full of toys.
After that he’d take the typewriter off into the woods, hide himself away in the bushes, and write. He’d put it on a tree stump and kneel in front of it. Often you could hear him, it was like a woodpecker pecking away far off in the woods. The lads made fun of him, they said he must be writing love letters to his girlfriends or maybe poetry, and some of them wanted him to write a poem for them so they could send it to their own girlfriends. Because other than me, no one knew what he was actually writing.
In the end, curiosity got the better of one of the men, he took the sentences out of the other guy’s knapsack while he was asleep and he brought them straight to me to read. I started reading and my hair stood on end. Every one of them was for someone in the unit. Carp, Rowan, Honeybee, Pinecone, Birchtree, Stag, Cricket, Burdock, Knothole. There was one for me too. On every one there were crimes like the worst son of a bitch. And every one of them was sentenced to death. The higher ranking ones were sent to hell as well. Naturally that included me. I thought to myself, that damn typewriter’s driven him insane. Maybe there’s something inside a machine like that, if it makes a man stop trusting his own hand.
“Get Prosecutor in here this second! What the hell have you written here, you bastard? Who told you to do this?”
“You did, sir.”
“Me?! I told you to make up some bad guys! Dear God, if I wasn’t your commanding officer I’d smack you in the face!” I ripped up all the sentences. “From now on, no more writing!” I changed his code name from “Prosecutor” to “Skylark,” and I ordered the typewriter to be smashed against a tree, who needed a typewriter in the woods.
After that he went around with a wild expression in his eyes, like he was looking but not seeing. He didn’t talk to anyone. They even said he wasn’t eating much, he’d just poke his spoon in his mess can a bit then throw the food out for the birds. A few days later he disappeared from the unit and we never heard from him again.
Dawn was just breaking when first from the river, then from the woods, we heard shots, and the dogs in the village started barking. To this day I can’t figure out how it could have happened. We had lookouts posted, and for several days before there hadn’t been any outsiders in the village, no one from the village had left. It was another thing that they took us from the woods, and from the south side at that, where no one would have expected them. There wasn’t even a cutting through the trees that way. And the Germans were scared to death of the woods. Especially woods like around Kawęczyn, where there was no telling where they began or where they ended. Maruszew was surrounded by woods on three sides, and half on the fourth. There was just the one road led there, and that was only a track. It was a good three and a half miles to the dirt road and twice as far to the highway, and you had to ride a whole day by wagon to get to the railroad stop. No German had ever appeared there, they might not even have known there was such a village. God himself seemed to have forgotten about Maruszew. As well as being far away from the rest of the world, people had a poor life of it there. The earth was sandy, and what can you grow in sandy soil. Rye, oats, potatoes, and that was how they lived out their days. Though in front of every house there was a little garden, and in each garden there were sunflowers, so you could have thought people led happy lives there. Because the sunflowers shone like little suns, even when the big sun went behind the clouds.
Whenever we wanted to clean up and wash our clothes, lick our wounds and get our strength back, and live like humans at least for a bit, we’d go to Maruszew even just for a couple of days. They’d take us in and share whatever they had with us, and though they didn’t have much, when you were there you felt the war wasn’t happening. You ate potato pancakes, drank homebrew vodka, and slept in beds. I even had a girl there. Tereska was her name. She was pretty as a picture and the kindest soul you could hope to meet. Her parents never said anything, even though when I was there we’d live like husband and wife. I never said anything about marrying her. Sometimes I’d promise to visit after the war if I lived, but maybe they didn’t believe I’d survive, and they preferred me to leave their daughter sinful and single than a widow. I still have the little religious medal she gave me one time so I’d always come back safe and sound. I’d often not see her for half a year or more, but every time she’d greet me like the dry earth greets the rain. Right away she’d bring the bathtub, set the water to heat in the kettles, and make the bed. Her parents would go off without a word and busy themselves with something, or go in the other room, and she’d tell me to take my clothes off and get in the tub. She’d soap up my back, pour water over me out of a mug, then help me dry myself. Who knows, maybe I might have married her after the war, but they burned her along with the whole village. She had broad hips, breasts like cabbage heads, she would have made children, two, maybe three.
I pulled on my pants and boots in a flash, grabbed my Sten from the chair, and put my jacket on as I ran. As I was crossing the hallway, behind me I heard her sob, Szymek! But there wasn’t even time to turn around and say, Tereska. I rushed outside. A few of the lads were crouching and moving along outside the house, firing straight ahead. But there were furious bursts of machine-gun fire coming at the village from every direction, from the fields, the woods, the river. I tried to give orders, but there was no one to carry them out and no one to pass them on. The village wasn’t at all big, but in the confusion everyone was trying to escape however they could. They fired every which way, without rhyme or reason, from attics, round the corners of houses, the men were pressed against the ground, against walls, a tree, a fence. Some of them I had to shake, I gave an order, didn’t you hear? No firing at random! Retreat to the end of the village! We’ll take up positions there! On top of it all, the villagers starting running out of their homes. What’s happening?! It’s the end of the world! Jesus and Mary! There was shouting, wailing. Women, men, mothers with babies, children woken from their sleep.
There was some witch of a woman in a long nightshirt, her hair like a crow’s nest and holding a crucifix, she started going on about how the whole world was taking revenge because of us, it was all our fault, because we kept coming here to have our way with the local girls and do bad things, because we’d made whores of them all. Maruszew had become Sodom and Gomorrah! And now God was sending down a punishment! But why Maruszew of all places? Lord, why Maruszew?!